He was the Beatle who, supposedly, had less of an appetite for mind-altering drugs than his bandmates, but Paul McCartney has told how the ingestion of one substance during their heyday led to him seeing “God”.

Speaking candidly about his spiritual beliefs, McCartney said in an interview that he believed there was “something higher” – linking it to an experience of taking Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in the company of others.

“We were immediately nailed to the sofa. And I saw God, this amazing towering thing, and I was humbled,” McCartney told the Sunday Times, recalling taking the substance with people including the art dealer and gallery owner Robert Fraser.

“And what I’m saying is, that moment didn’t turn my life around, but it was a clue.

“It was huge. A massive wall that I couldn’t see the top of, and I was at the bottom. And anybody else would say it’s just the drug, the hallucination, but both Robert and I were like, ‘Did you see that?’ We felt we had seen a higher thing.”

Turning to today, the singer-songwriter also spoke of needing to satiate his continuing creative appetite, which has led him to work recently with the rapper Stormzy, who had asked him for advice.

“He’s looking to advance his music. As a rapper, I thought he’d have words down, but there was a piano, so I showed him basic stuff – how you get middle C, make a chord, a triad and, just by moving that, get D minor, E minor, F, G, A minor, and how that’s enough for anyone,” he said.

Regarding the general state of the world, McCartney mourned what he said was a situation in which “violence and arrogance are back”.

“It’s like how fashion goes in cycles, how bell-bottoms came back. We were heading towards sense, but we are into the next pendulum swing now. That happens in life,” he said.

McCartney said he was still optimistic about the future, however, recalling Britain in the 1970s: “Cemeteries were left to rot. We felt we were heading to Armageddon, but it cleaned up.”